Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address:. Sign me up! A couple of months ago adverts started appearing in the local papers advising residents to obtain National Identity cards. One presumes the system was paid for by considerable cross-subsidy given that expats paid , leones about US Dollars while locals paid 50, leones. I was surprised to find the process not nearly as labyrinthine as I thought.
I was fortunate that someone in my team had gone as a Guinea pig the week before. I was further aided that my colleague shared a surname with the head of the office — a co-incidence he seemed to delight in. Given the recent furore in UK over the proposed introduction of ID cards, you might well ask if there was a similar debate in Salone over the need and rationale for the cards. If there was a debate, it passed me and everyone I know by. The cynic in me thought that whatever the purpose, the police would find a way to profit.
African capitals are like buses it seems; you wait a year for one, and then 2 come along. While Liberia had an unmistakably American air, Guinea belies its status as a former French colony, not matter how prominent it was in asserting a proudly independent African identity.
The first signs are the cars; instead of Nissans, a good number of the taxis are Renaults. And then there are the small details; the unmistakably French style of street signs, baguettes for sale on the road side, and people playing boules in the shade. Of course, the development industry has a whole host of metrics, indicators and indicies devoted to the subject. Our reflections, it must be said, are a little less scientific! But these often reflect a benefits accruing to a rather narrow elite.
I was struck for instance to see a train track by the side of the road on the way from the airport. But there are other signs that give a hint of how much of this wealth has trickled down; public transport for example. Immediately striking on entering Liberia and Guinea was how many fewer motorbike taxis there are, and the better condition of car taxis compared to Sierra Leone. The other indicator is an even smaller detail: the cigarette. By this measure, Guinea wins hands down. The rains seem to rumble on interminably.
